Sunday, 31 January 2016

OnePlus launched the OnePlus 2 in July last year, and at the time, had only launched the 64GB inbuilt storage variant at Rs. 24,999 in India. The Chinese smartphone maker had at that point said it would bring the 16GB inbuilt storage variant to India later in the year, at Rs. 22,999. However, the company was not able to stick to its promise. It has now finally launched the 16GB variant in the country, and the model is available exclusively from Amazon India - and just like the 64GB variant, it does not require any invites.

As for the specifications, the 16GB OnePlus 2 sports similar innards to the 64GB model, but with two minor differences - 16GB eMMC v5.0 inbuilt storage instead of 64GB, and 3GB of LPDDR4 RAM instead of 4GB.

OnePlus 2 features a 5.5-inch in-cell display with a full-HD (1080x1920 pixel) resolution and 1500:1 contrast ratio. It is powered by a 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 810 v2.1 SoC clocked at 1.8GHz and coupled with an Adreno 430 GPU.

The smartphone sports dual 4G Nano-SIM cards (dual-SIM dual standby), as well as USB Type-C connectivity (with the cable reversible at both ends). The OnePlus 2 bears a 13-megapixel rear camera with a 1.3-micron sensor, laser autofocus, dual-LED flash, f/2.0 aperture, 4K video recording, RAW image support, and OIS, apart from a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. It runs on a 3300mAh battery, and has a fingerprint sensor that can store up to 5 prints and unlock in under 0.5 seconds.

The company last month seeded an over-the-air (OTA) update to OxygenOS 2.2.0 for the OnePlus 2. The update fixes dual-SIM preference selection issues in settings; adds NTFS and exFAT support for OTG; fixes Google Camera photo-sphere and panorama bugs, and also brings screen temperature adjust options directly from quick settings. The Chinese tech firm also made the handset invite-free in India last month.

Saturday, 23 January 2016

Google India and Indian Railways' arm RailTel on Friday announced the availability of free high-speed public Wi-Fi service at the Mumbai Central station. To recall, the public Wi-Fi project for Indian Railways was announced back in September when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Google headquarters in Mountain View.

The search giant in an emailed statement on Friday said that it will expand the free public Wi-Fi network to 100 of the busiest railway stations in India by the end of this year, and eventually expand to 400 railway stations. Next in line are stations in Allahabad, Patna, Jaipur, and Ranchi.

"Even with just the first 100 stations online, this project will make Wi-Fi available to millions of Indians - who pass through railway stations every day, making it the largest public Wi-Fi project in India and among the largest in the world by number of potential users," the statement added.

The Google RailWire public Wi-Fi service will be accessible by Wi-Fi enabled mobiles. The emailed statement details the process of logging onto the network.

How to log in to Google and Railwire's free public Wi-Fi:
1) Users will have to visit the Wi-Fi Settings of their smartphone, and select the RailWire network.

2) Users then have to open their mobile browser, and then navigate to railwire.co.in.

3) On the RailWire website, users will be prompted to their phone number on the Wi-Fi login screen, and then press Receive SMS.

4) Users will receive an SMS message with a 4-digit OTP (one-time password) code, and they will then have to enter the code at the Wi-Fi login screen, and click Done.

5) Users will then be shown a checkmark, which confirms they are connected to the free Wi-Fi.

Commenting on the launch, Chairman and Managing Director of RailTel Shri R. K. Bahuguna said, "Our intent was to fulfil Indian Railway's vision of providing Railway passengers access to high speed Internet through our optical fibre communication network. Affordable smartphones have made it possible for the common men to experience the power of Internet. With our partnership with Google, we are very confident of rolling out a robust, scalable service at Railway stations in the near future."

Speaking at the launch, Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Google South East Asia and India said, "We're delighted to launch India's first high speed public Wi-Fi service in partnership with Indian Railways. Bringing affordable Internet access to millions of people is an important part of making the Internet both easily accessible and useful for more than 300 million Indians who are already online, and the nearly one billion more who are not. By end of this year over 10 million people will be able to enjoy this experience at 100 stations spread across the country. I would like to thank the Indian Railways for their support and vision to provide a world class high speed public Wi-Fi network at the stations."

"We've focused on delivering a network that is at par with the high speed public Wi-Fi network that is available to users in developed countries. The network is built for wide coverage and high capacity usage unlike a typical Wi-Fi hotspot which offers connectivity in limited area and poor experience. This network will extend to cover both long distance train station and the local train station in Mumbai Central. The next four stations we'll bring online will be Allahabad, Patna, Jaipur and Ranchi and others will follow very shortly," said, Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Project, Google India.

Ever wondered what the setting of Grand Theft Auto V - Los Santos - looked like back in the 80s? British gamer and GTA enthusiast Pab Jones has produced and recorded an 11-minute compilation of Rockstar's latest open-world third person crime adventure inspired by the clothes, cars, and neon of 80s USA.

2002's GTA Vice City was an ode to those times, and Jones' work is replete with call-backs to the music videos of those times, from the random fast-forwards to sound glitches to framing.

"It take so long because so much goes into making a GTA video and I think I speak for most people who make GTA videos when I say that," said Jones, speaking in the comments on YouTube. "You have to think about locations, clothing, time of day, vehicles guns, positioning, camera angles, the weather and if you have actors helping out you have to work around their gaming times and that's just for the filming then it's on to the Rockstar Editor, camera angles, effects, sound, DOF, after a month in the editor it's on to Sony Vegas for the final touches and music editing."

Apart from Vice City, Jones also cited Michael Mann-produced TV series Miami Vice that ran for five seasons between 1984 and 1989, the rise and style of music cable channel MTV and technologies such as VHS and Betamax as inspiration for his work.

Microsoft on Thursday announced that Dropbox has released its universal Windows 10 app, adding that users can utilise Windows Hello biometrics feature to sign into their Dropbox account.

Dropbox for Windows 10 offers several interesting features including the ability to allow a user to drag and drop files from Windows File Explorer to Dropbox app. Users can also utilise Quick Search and set up interactive notifications. However, more notable is support for Windows Hello, which will allow users to log into their account using fingerprint or face for authentication.

Dropbox already exists on Windows 8 as a modern app, and the new release is a re-launched app for the new desktop version. Dropbox said that users can continue to work on Windows 8 app, but they will be slowly upgraded to the new version.

Dropbox and Microsoft partnered in November 2014 and have since released a number of handy integrations - including the ability to edit Office files from within Dropbox app. Dropbox says that the partnership has resulted in 17 million users taking advantage of their collaborated features.

"Microsoft is excited to partner with Dropbox to bring more cloud storage and productivity services to Windows 10 across PC and tablets. With the arrival of Dropbox, Windows 10 fans have easy and convenient access to photos, documents, and files anytime, anywhere," said Steve Guggenheimer, Corporate Vice President of Developer Platform & Evangelism and Chief Evangelist, Microsoft

Dropbox said that an app optimised for tablets will be available in the coming days. It is also working on a Windows 10 Mobile app, which it expects to release in "early 2016."

Although the game is up for pre-order, developer Ubisoft Massive has yet to provide details on hardware specifications PC gamers will need to run its upcoming post-pandemic open world third-person role-playing video game, Tom Clancy's The Division.

But keen-eyed members of gaming platform Steam have unearthed what they claim is a reply from Ubisoft Russia on minimum and required PC specifications for the closed beta that arrives next week on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC.

Below are the requirements for Tom Clancy's The Division. Note that these may not be final or could be entirely inaccurate.

It's been long time coming but looks like Xiaomi is finally set to enthrall audiences across the globe with its next Mi flagship earlier this week. Lei Jun and Co. are holding out a major global event in their home surroundings, wherein two Mi devices; Mi 5 and Mi 5 Plus are to be unveiled, they say.

The device termed Libra has been making the rounds of media table over the past few weeks which is why the dated announcement of 16 July doesn't come across as an out of blue event. In all likelihood, Mi 5 and Mi 5 Plus are the devices lined up and here's what we know about the phones right now.

Both kind of Mi's

We saw the two-thronged strategy from Xiaomi earlier this year when Mi Note and Mi Note Pro editions were launched and this was start to something bigger, literally. Mi 5 will be nothing bigger than 5.2-inch which seems quite sensible on Xiaomi's part and the Plus variant should have a phablet-sized 6-inch form, if not slightly smaller. Both the flagship options will get industry-standard 2K (1440p) display resolution.

Which Snapdragon SoC then?

While it's obvious to get a Qualcomm chipset on high-end device (unless you're a HTC) but even then there's a big Snapdragon conundrum running these days. Will my device work fine with 810 or should I opt for safer 808? It's a bold move to opt for 810 with all the heating memoirs running aboard these days. OnePlus has already confirmed its priority by sticking with the 810 but Xiaomi's seems to be undecided about both the aforementioned variants, so we will have to wait for D-Day to see what the company opts for.

More camera power then please

If Xiaomi wants Mi 5 series to rival the likes of Samsung Galaxy S6 or LG G4 then we want more imaging brilliance laced onto the phones. We're talking about a 16MP rear camera with laser auto-focus if possible and an 8MP shooter on the front for those quality selfie clicks. Bring it on!

Keep the battery running

High-powered devices can only sustain for longer period if given the right back up solution. Big-size battery with quick charging technology feature is a flagship essential these days and Xiaomi has to stick to those for its sake.

Price it right with one eye on India

Yes, if Indian market is only second to China for Xiaomi then a quick global-to-India availability needs to happen. One thing is for certain, Xiaomi devices above 20K aren't going to find many takers in the country (Mi 4 proved it) which is either they lower down price of Mi 4 (or discontinue) to shelf the Mi 5 at similar range.

It's Xiaomi vs OnePlus this month and are eyes will be glued to what the Chinese brands have to offer with their latest flagship device have to offer and when their India debut happens, after all that's where the money is these days. Stay tuned.

Google has released the version 48.0.2564.82 of its Chrome browser for Linux, Windows, and OS X. The updated version brings several fixes and improvements on both desktop and mobile devices.

The Chrome v48 brings a number of bug fixes most of which were detected using AddressSanitizer, Controle Flow Integrity, and MemorySanitizer codes, says the blog post. It also lists 37 security fixes as a part of its bounty rewards programme. The version has already been rolled out for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

In the meanwhile, Chrome 48 for mobile devices (iOS and Android) is still in beta. Some of the new features the beta brings including allowing websites to add custom buttons to notifications, letting users complete a task from within the notifications bar itself. It will ditch the RC4 cipher support on HTTPS connections. For those unaware, RC4 cipher is a stream cipher that is supported by several browsers and online services for encryption purposes. However, due to several bugs found in the RC4 cipher over time, the feature support has finally been removed.

As spotted by Venturebeat, the Chrome 48 beta for Android and iOS lets developers detect a device's maximum bandwidth using NetworkInformation.downlinkMax, or respond to connection speed changes using NetworkInformation.onChange event handler. This will result in better detection of connection speed on the device that will help in sending optimum page resources for that connection. The version will also let websites bring presenter mode support with Chromecast or other Google Cast-enabled devices. Google has not yet mentioned as to when it will bring the general release of Chrome 48 to Android and iOS.

The search giant last month in its Chrome 47 version removed the desktop notification centre. It also brought new features for Android and iOS.